needs more demons?

Dennis Wheatley’s supernatural thriller The Satanist is so ugly and offensive that I often found it unintentionally hilarious. It revolves primarily around the attempts of a special branch of British intelligence to unravel the schemes of a cult of communist Satanists (some of whom are also, no joke, ex-Nazis).

The novel was first published in 1960 — seven years after Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man won the National Book Award. But although The Satanist is unmistakably set during the Cold War, it — and Wheatley — seem to belong to another era altogether. The Satanist is ridiculously racist and sexist. Wheatley’s female protagonist, for instance, a recently-widowed, gold-hearted, ex-hooker, is willing to bed a Satanist or two for King and crown, but she has “limits beyond which she was not prepared to go. She had never even spoken to a coloured man until she met Ratnadatta, and had all a normal white woman’s prejudice against physical contact with them.”

Wheatley is leeringly suggestive about sex, conjuring such spectres as a “lesbian negress,” but what action there is occurs discretely offscreen. He’s not nearly as squeamish about violence, and has no gentlemanly reserve about describing violence done to ladies (or, anyway, ex-hookers). That aspect I couldn’t manage to laugh off.

Wheatley also frequently pauses the narrative to inject what are presumably his own reactionary opinions. Once his riff about how a preemptive nuclear strike by the West was the only way to forestall a domino theory Soviet victory could have been genuinely frightening. Now, thankfully, it’s laughable. Unfortunately we are still beset with small-minded folk who might endorse Wheatley’s implication that modern art is created by and for communists, Satanists, and other deviants: “…the monstrosities in stone, meaningless daubs on canvas, and ugly compositions of sound now being produced could bring pleasure to few people other than those with twisted minds.”

Wheatley’s grasp of the modern era is sometimes baffling:

…he pressed a switch at the side of the square black box he had brought up to the bedroom the previous afternoon. Mary was still dozing when his voice issued from the box. Harshly it commanded: “Get your clothes off!”

Sitting up she stared at it. She had heard of, but never seen, a tape recorder.

And his prose is sometimes befuddling:

While they ate a pleasant meal, they reviewed the extraordinary case of Otto Khune and his twin and, when they had got to the cheese, reflected gloomily on the risk that would have to be run if Otto were allowed to hand over to Lothar the fuel formula in desolate moorland country that could be kept under observation only from a distance.

Far and away my favorite aspect of the novel emerges after it takes a James Bond-ish, madman-holding-the-world-hostage turn. Wheatley’s elite special forces have a highly developed set of priorities:

“…Before you go any further, though, you say the story is a long one, and I am expecting a few friends in for dinner quite shortly. I take it everything possible is being done to trace these stolen drums of our special fuel?”

“Everything, Sir.”

“Very well, then.” Sir Charles stood up. “It is now too late to put my friends off, but I can put off a couple who were to dine with me. If I can be of no immediate help this long story of yours will keep for an hour or two, so I suggest that the three of you should return at eight o’clock and tell it to me over dinner.”

and:

.. I naturally went all out to get him. I not only alerted Special Branch, but got the Chief Constables of all the Home Counties out of bed to lay on networks in case he made for some hideout on the East or South coasts. After half an hour I’d done all I could so, having told the Office to call me if they got him, I put out the light and went to sleep again.

and:

After they had had a round of drinks they all felt better, and over the good meal that followed they were able to discuss the matter with relative calmness…When they had finished their meal C.B told Barney that …he was to go home and to bed…it was agreed they should all meet at Verney’s office at nine o’clock the following morning.

Not exactly 24!

Needs More Demons? Oh my stars and garters, yes it surely does.